Out with the old, some if it anyway

 
 Time to change my header and time for all the jack 'o lanterns to be put away. Fortunately I am leaving up what I need for fall decorating. Silly me keeps a tree up year round and decorates it seasonally.  Here is the Halloween version.  After some minor 'tweaks' it will ready to be  my fall tree.

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday.   I think because I remember the fun of the Thanksgiving football games which maybe at the time the teeth chattering temps I didn't think were so much fun.......A little history, I was the HS Band Booster President or Secretary or Treasurer or plain old Booster for over 8 years.   Anyone who has been involved with high school band knows that they practice more hours per week than the football team.   Not only that, their season runs from July to June.   Each year there were 60 to 100 kids that we spent 3-4-5 days each week with.   Everyone needs to belong to something and these were the kids that weren't necessarily atheletes........except for that year when our Drum Major was the Capt of the football team and at half-time Carl jumped on the scaffold to conduct the band in his football uniform.  (I need to dig up a pix of that out of the old shoebox!)  Over the years we had a girl with bi-lateral hearing aids on the flag team and a boy who was blind who played the tympany and carried one side of the banner in parades.  I loved those exhausted years....which accounts for the low stitching turn out in the 90's.   But anyway, enough of my soapbox......

I remember getting up at the pre-crack of dawn to stuff the turkey and get it in the oven before I made big igloo coolers full of hot chocolate for 100. Coming in the house from the game, having spent time with my band family, entering the house filled with the delicous smell with your cheeks rosey and so cold they hurt always made me feel like I was walking into a Norman Rockwell life.

Thanksgiving, to me,  is just that simple.....it is a time of Thanksgiving. To appreciate family and friends and tradition. There is no pressure, just good smells and good food and good fun with family and friends. I don't know whether I am cooking this year or if we will all travel to the City of Brotherly Love to my daughter's, but I know there will be good food, good smells, good family and friend time and then the food coma that follows. And no, my good feelings of Thanksgiving do not carry over to Black Friday. No good memories there!